Sonata, Microsoft tie up for Axapta, CRM

BANGALORE: Software products and services firm, Sonata Software Ltd. and Microsoft Corporation have announced a strategic alliance, to bring significant business benefits to Independent Software Vendors (ISV), large enterprises and mid-market organizations. Under the alliance, Sonata will deliver solutions and services, based on Microsoft technologies and products. This means Sonata would help ISVs, on behalf of Microsoft, accelerate delivery of products to market and reduce R&D spend through Sonata's "360° partnership" model and Microsoft's .NET capabilities.

The Indian firm would also assist large enterprises migrate applications from mainframe and mid-range systems to Microsoft Windows Server 2003 and the Windows Server System, to reduce operational and maintenance costs and take advantage of current market applications and skills.

Finally the alliance is to enable mid-market companies to improve business management and customer interaction through enterprise systems using Microsoft Business Solutions-Axapta and Microsoft Business Solutions CRM, delivered quickly and with minimal risk.

Under this alliance, Sonata has also established a Microsoft Competency Center (MCC) to deliver customized solutions based on Microsoft Axapta and Microsoft CRM. Coupled with Sonata's extensive mid-market ERP and CRM implementation expertise, the MCC offers advanced solution frameworks for the CPG and ISV verticals, to help customers reduce the cost, time and risk involved in such implementations.

"We have had the good fortune to team with Sonata in our recent Translution suite product development on .NET," said Ted Marshall, Managing Director of Translution Ltd., a Microsoft Partner, which is developing technologies to enable Microsoft Exchange and Outlook users improve communications by eliminating language barriers. "Based on our first-hand experience with both the companies, we believe the Sonata-Microsoft alliance will benefit solution providers like us. .NET gives us the flexibility to support translation across multiple European languages that is not possible with systems running on alternative platforms. Look for .NET, with support from premier software service providers like Sonata, to maintain its status as an industry standard for years to come."

"Sonata has proven expertise in helping both software applications vendors and large enterprises take advantage of .NET software to accelerate product development and reduce the cost of ownership," said Simon Witts, corporate vice president of the Enterprise and Partner Group, Microsoft. "We look forward to expanding our scope of success with Sonata across these segments as well as in the mid-market with solutions based on Microsoft Business Solutions."

B Ramaswamy, President and MD of Sonata Software, said, "We are excited at this opportunity of working closely with Microsoft. With this alliance, Sonata will be providing customers a unique blend of leading edge platforms, future-ready solutions and a low-risk global delivery model. It is a compelling value proposition to customers worldwide."